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Inclusion

State and Federal Governments around the globe are toughening up on public sector web accessibility. The latest case is the Alaskan Juneau School District, which felt the wrath of that state’s Government because of a complaint from the public that their websites aren’t inclusive for all needs.

After receiving the disability discrimination complaint, Alaskan authorities undertook a rigorous investigation and found out that ten other schools, educational groups, and institutions (including the Montana School for the Deaf and blind) also had accessibility issues on their websites.

Robin Christopherson, head of digital inclusion at Abilitynet, a UK disabilities charity, has written an open letter to the British Parliament, to put pressure on the people in power to fine organisations whose websites and apps fail to comply with WCAG 2.0.

‘OpenAccess Captions’ is a brand new application for iPads and iPhones that was developed by Brisbane-based charity Conexu Foundation. It is an app that aims to connect callers via a live captioner so that phone conversations can be read in live-time.

This app was launched this week to coincide with Deafblind Awareness Week (the last day is today). The app creators have hailed it as a ‘game-changer’ for those who are Deaf and blind or have hearing loss or vision impairment.

Blogging encourages freedom of personal expression so it should be a right for anyone, regardless of disabilities or requirements, to have access to this vast pool of knowledge and community. But what simple things can you do as a blogger, or a budding blogger, to make sure that your blog is accessible? There are 5 simple ways that you can dramatically improve your blog’s accessibility.

It’s fair to say that the blogging world has boomed in recent years, with more and more people starting a blog or reading a blog on a regular basis. You only have to whisper the world ‘Zoella’ to a tween and they know exactly who they are and get all starry-eyed.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has published preliminary exemption orders for 34 channels provided on Telstra Pay TV for mobile phones. These include both free-to-air channels such as ABC1, and channels available on Foxtel.

On Global Accessibility Awareness Day, 19 May 2016, the New Zealand Captioning Working Group submitted a petition to Mojo Mathers, Green MP, with more than 2,300 signatures in a bid for the House of Representatives to legislate closed captioning across all relevant media.

As part of its focus to make Android devices more accessible to people with disabilities, Google has launched Voice Access Beta, a new accessibility service that allows Android users to control all of the functionality of their device by voice alone.

The new app allows users to change settings, writing texts, scrolling to the end of a page, using the camera, contacts and more. This will allow a greater inclusion to users unable to operate the touchscreen due to a disability.

As today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), we thought that we would encourage some involvement amongst the community so that you can gain a first-hand awareness of accessibility. We hope this is an eye-opener and maybe a little bit of a mid-week challenge.

Earlier this week Amazon introduced text-to-voice accessory ‘VoiceView‘ to its more affordable Kindle models, starting with the Kindle Paperwhite (7th gen). Up until now, this feature was only available on the company’s more expensive Kindle Fire tablets.